Information technology systems often play an important role in the success of a business. A company typically operates in a highly competitive environment, in which the operation of the company's information technology systems can differentiate the company from its competitors. Consequently, resiliency for technology solutions is often closely related to competitive advantage. For example, the technology that supports banking centers, ATMs, telephone banking, and online banking channels must be reliable and highly available in order for a bank to maintain and grow market share. If the bank is unable to satisfy a customer's request through one of these channels, the bank runs the risk of losing a customer. Certain types of failures may also present direct financial, reputation, legal, or compliance risk.
At the same time, building resilient solutions can be expensive. It is not cost-effective to build every solution to be highly resilient. Different systems require different levels of resiliency in order to be cost-competitive. Accurately assessing those needs and implementing adequate resiliency features are important. As a result, the resiliency needs of a solution are rarely explicitly identified. When this was done, the resiliency needs are often poorly defined with inconsistent criteria. Lacking a consistent assessment framework can make it difficult to consistently apply resiliency features based on a solution's need. As a result, inconsistencies for incorporating resiliency in an information technology system may occur. These inconsistencies may degrade system efficiency, both in terms of the efficiency of solutions as well as design effort.